"Summum Bonum" is a poem by Robert Browning.Robert Browning at Poetry Foundation. It was published in the poet's last book, Asolando, in 1889.Robert Browning at Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a short poem or epigram. The title is a Latin phrase that means the highest good.
Form The poem is composed of eight lines. They are not equally long. Some are fifteen syllables long, while others are only six syllables long. The metre is anapaestic.More about anapaestic metre is in: Joseph Berg Esenwein, Mary Eleanor Roberts, The art of versification, p. 51. The longer lines are built of five feet: x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / and the shorter of only two feet: x x / x x / while Browning frequently employs what might be considered cretic substitutions:
/ x / / x / / x / Breath and bloom, shade and shine, wonder, wealth...
The lines rhyme according to the scheme ABABBCAC and also feature alliteration.Alliteration at Encyclopaedia Britannica.Paulina Estella Buhl, A Historical and Critical Study of Browning's Asolando Volume, p. 132.
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Critical reception A Polish sociologist, Leon Winiarski, who was active at the end of the 19th century, was disgusted with the poem. In his view, Browning should not have written it, writing: "We have to laugh, when we read that this eighty-year-old man standing at the edge of a grave thinks that the greatest happiness in life is in 'kissing a girl'."Leon Winiarski, Robert Browning (a review of Asolando), Prawda. Tygodnik polityczny, społeczny i literacki, Warszawa 14(2) czerwca 1890 r. s. 284.
References
Bibliography Robert Browning, Asolando: fancies and facts, London 1890.